lieve. The real test of the good faith of the United States has yet to come. It will come in the question whether the United States Government will consent to submit the dispute between Great Britain and themselves to arbitration at the Hague. We refuse to believe that the United States will not come out of that test with honor. As our readers know, we are admirers of the American nation. They may sometimes have even thought that we are American-mad in our liking for American ways and our trust in the essential rightness which we believe lies behind and beyond the superficial eccentricities and waywardness of that mighty agglomeration of peoples. trust is about to pass through a severe ordeal. But we are still confident that even if the American Government try to hold to the peculiar and unexpected interpretation of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, which is the foundation of the Panama Canal Act, the strength of popular opinion will force them to let the question go to the Hague.

Our

We hope we may not be accused of hypocritical affectation if we say that to our mind the question at stake is something much more than the mere commercial interests of Great Britain, important though those no doubt are; there is also at stake the honorable tradition of the American nation-the nation of Washington and Lincolnwhich most Englishmen regard as in part their own, because it has placed the wonderful impress of Anglo-Saxon character upon the singular mixture of races which make up the United States. One cannot hesitate in guessing what Lincoln would have said now. He thought that when a matter of right was involved no sacrifices of material interests or even of human life, however crushing, were too great to be accepted. "Let Heaven fall," he always seemed to say, "we must do what is right." Few people who have ever

read them can forget the words of his second Inaugural Address. "Yet if God wills that it [the Civil War] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" We shall not insist on the analogy, for it would be to compare the lesser with the greater. The sacrifice that the United States is now asked to make is not very great. us see what it is.

Let

In the Panama Canal Act it is provided that "no tolls shall be levied upon vessels engaged in the coastwise trade of the United States." But in the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty it is provided that "the Canal shall be free and open to the vessels of all nations on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any such nation." Mr. Taft, chiming in with the arguments of Congress, explains that these words mean only that the United States is not to discriminate in favor of any particular foreign nation, but that as owner of the Canal she may discriminate in favor of herself. Mr. Taft makes this claim in clear words in his Memorandum to Congress. He says that the Treaty was not "intended to limit or hamper the United States in the exercise of its sovereign power to deal with its own commerce, using its own canal in whatsoever manner it saw fit." We should think there can hardly be an English-speaking person outside America who does not feel satisfied that the words "all nations" in the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty include the United States herself. For what other reason did Great Britain give up her right to be joint-builder and owner of the Canal with the United States? She

did not instruct Lord Pauncefote to draw up the Treaty for the fun of giving something for nothing. It was expressly understood that the considerable changes to which we consented in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty were in return for the complete equality of foreign and American ships in the use of the Canal. At the time this was apparently understood perfectly well by the American Senate. An amendment was proposed in the Senate to the HayPauncefote Treaty that discrimination should be allowed in favor of American coastwise vessels, but it was rejected. Take, as an illustration of the natural interpretation of a treaty-as opposed to Mr. Taft's unnatural interpretation-the reading of the AngloFrench Convention. The Convention provides for the freedom of foreign trade in Morocco and Egypt in these words: "The two Governments, being equally attached to the principle of commercial liberty both in Egypt and in Morocco, declare that they will not in those countries countenance any inequality either in the imposition of custom duties or other taxes or of railway transport charges." What should we say if France discriminated in her own favor in Morocco, or what would France say if we discriminated in our own favor in Egypt? Yet the words of the Anglo-French Convention are less explicit than those of the HayPauncefote Treaty.

be. Moreover, "coastwise" trade in America is a notoriously vague expression. Vessels which go from an Amercan Atlantic port to an American Pacific port via Cape Horn, or even via the Cape of Good Hope, are often said to be engaged in coastwise trade. A German ship which went from New York through the Suez Canal and across the Indian and Pacific Oceans to San Francisco was fined for violating the American monopoly of coastwise traffic. But even if ocean-going American ships were all rigorously kept out of the coastwise class discrimination would still be there.

We return to the most important question of arbitration. Mr. Taft's curious advice to Congress that a resolution should be adopted declaring that the Panama Canal Act violates no treaty appears superficially to be an attempt to prejudge the proposal of arbitration. We earnestly trust that this aspect of his words may turn out to be only accidental. We do not see how the United States Government can possibly refuse to agree to arbitration. If they should refuse, the cause of arbitration will be set back half-a-century. And we shall have to add the United States to the list of countries in whose purview treaties have not their face value. If ever the nations of the world thought in this way about their relations with the United States it would be the United States herself that would suffer most. The loss of great repute undermines more than moral credit. We cannot contemplate such a thing. No, Great Britain and the United States amicably referred the ugly 'Alabama' business to arbitration, and the similarly ugly Venezuela question. Great Britain came badly out of the 'Alabama' case, but we did not enter into recriminations afterwards, as Mr. Taft has not forgotten. We abided by the decision of the umpire, and we should do so again in the case of the

Panama Canal, whatever the decision might be. All we ask is that the practice of arbitration between our American kinsmen and ourselves shall not cease.

Mr. Taft is himself one of the great champions of arbitration. How could

he play his cause false now? When he was recommending arbitration treaties with Great Britain and France-wider arbitration treaties than the world had ever dreamed of-he said:

If now we can negotiate and put through a positive agreement with some great nation to abide the adjudication of an international arbitral Court in every issue which cannot be settled by negotiation, no matter what it involves, whether honor, territory, or money, we shall have made a long step forward by demonstrating that it is possible for two nations at least to establish as between them the same system of due process of law that exists be: The Spectator.

tween individuals under a Government.

Can the man who used those words conceivably say that there is some good cause why the interpretation of the Panama Canal Act should not be referred to the Hague? The proposed arbitration treaties with France and Great Britain were thrown out by the Senate. But we have, as it is, solid ground on which to proceed. There is the Arbitration Convention of 1908, which provides that "differences which may arise of a legal nature or relating to the interpretation of treaties between the two contracting parties, and which it may not have been possible to settle by diplomacy, shall be referred to the Permanent Court of Arbitration established at the Hague." Such a convention seems made for the present case. Till we learn it from his own mouth we, for our part, shall not believe that Mr. Taft will attempt to ignore this existing agreement.

The clause of the Panama Canal Bill, virtually exempting all American vessels engaged in foreign trade from the dues to be paid by vessels of other nations passing through the Canal, was a plain violation of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty providing that "the Canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations observing these rules on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions of traffic or otherwise." The pretence that "all nations" meant "all other nations" was a manifest infringement of the spirit and the letter of the treaty. The elim ination of this clause, however, from the final draft, which received the signature of President Taft, appears to

us to remove the substance of the grievance. It is, of course, true that the retention of the clause exempting from dues American coastwise shipping has the appearance of imposing a discrimination against foreign vessels. But it is an appearance only. For the discrimination is neither made nor enhanced by the terms of this Act. It existed before. The Navigation Laws of the United States have, in accordance with their rigorous protective policy, been framed so as to secure a complete monopoly of coastwise trade for American ships, and their Courts have given so liberal an interpretation to the term "coastwise" as to include vessels plying round Cape Horn on their voyage between New York and San Francisco. This legal monopoly has been, doubtless, detri

mental to British and other foreign shipping companies, which, under terms of equal competition, would have secured a large share of the coasting trade. It has been still more detrimental to American merchants and consumers, for it has precluded them from the advantages of better facilities of transport and lower rates, which equal competition would have afforded. But it cannot, in our judgment, be contended with any show of reason that the opening of the Panama Canal requires the Government of the United States to cancel this monopoly. Such a concession was evidently no part of the intention of either party to the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, nor does the coastwise clause impose any new or real discrimination. It merely safeguards or secures a discrimination already existing and founded upon general principles of policy which have no particular reference to Panama.

The clearness of the American case upon this head is, indeed, somewhat obscured by the language of the Memorandum with which President Taft accompanied his signature of the Act. He there argues that, since other nations have an undeniable right to extend "favors" to their ships using the Canal, it would be "absurd" to refuse a similar right to the Government of the United States. In conclusion, he protests "against any proposal to read into the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty a surrender by the United States of its right to regulate its own commerce in its own way, by its own method, a right which neither Great Britain herself nor any other nation which may use the Canal has surrendered, or proposes to surrender." The ambiguity of such language is to be regretted. The only "favors" which other nations could extend to their ships would be in the shape of bounties, and nobody would think of denying a similar right to the United States to subsidize her vessels.

The vice of Mr. Taft's contention is that it goes beyond the requirements of his case. It would appear to sustain the wider discrimination against foreign ships, which has disappeared from the final draft of the Act. All that Mr. Taft needed to argue was that it could not be contended that the Panama Act should be made an instrument for the practical abandonment of the navigation policy previously in operation. Perhaps it was unnecessary to have inserted in the Act any clause presenting this appearance of discrimination. For the Act could hardly have been interpreted by any Internationa! Court as designed to remove from the United States a right of regulating purely internal traffic, which belongs to every sovereign Power. But fairminded people must recognize that the clause inflicts no new grievance upon the trade of this or any other country. We hope, therefore, that there is no truth in the rumor that our Government is entering a protest at Washington against this provision of the Panama Act. Such a protest, especially at such a moment, when even the most obliging of Americans is on his guard against any show of knuckling under to foreigners, would be a serious blunder. No American Government could concede a point, involving, incidentally, so grave a disturbance of deep-rooted policy, and we do not for a moment believe that any international tribunal would decide the matter in our favor. It is, however, possible that the clause precluding from all use of the Canal ships owned by railroads which are themselves competitors for traffic with the Panama route, may be a subject of discussion between our Government and that of the United States. For, though the text of the new Act does not make it clear how the prohibition applies to transport companies outside the jurisdiction of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, it has

been generally understood that it is to be extended to the vessels owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway. It would certainly appear as if the refusal to Canadian companies of the use of the Canal for purposes of foreign, i.e., non-American, commerce was an infringement of the terms of the HayPauncefote treaty. Nor do we understand by what extension of the federal laws at Washington any action of a Canadian railway can be brought within the purview of the Inter-State Commerce Commission. On such a matter there may be good reason for discussion, and, if necessary, arbitration, between this country and the United States. Nor, perhaps, is the extraordinary extension which the latter country gives to "coasting" to be deemed a question entirely outside the

The Nation.

range of international consideration. But those journals in Great Britain and on the Continent which are arraigning with so much vehemence the claim of America to remit the fees for her coasting vessels, are beating the air. Their case is founded upon a complete misapprehension of the governing facts of the situation. Though this misapprehension seems to be shared by not a few leaders of public opinion in the United States, this support is evidently a survival of the strong feeling aroused against the quite unjustifiable claims of the earlier draft of the measure. When it comes to be recognized that the Act merely confirms a previously existing discrimination in favor of American coastwise trade, there will, we think, be a general acquiescence in this provision.

Under the title "The Education of Self," the Funk & Wagnalls Co. publishes a new translation of Dr. Paul Dubois's "L'Education de Soi-Meme." This translation, which is by Edward G. Richards, is made from the latest French edition, and supersedes an earlier translation, published several years ago under the title "Self-Control and How to Secure It." In either form and under either title, the book is thoroughly wholesome and stimulating, teaching important lessons of conduct sensibly and forcibly, insisting on highideals without "preachiness," and presenting even familiar truths from a novel point of view and with an engaging lucidity of style.

The Editor Company of Ridgewood, New Jersey, publishes a fresh and extremely interesting study of "The American Short Story" with relation to

the influence of locality in its development. The author, Dr. Elias Lieberman, has spared no pains in the collation and analysis of his material; and after setting forth some general considerations of the forces which determine localities and types of men and women, and of the point of contact between the short story and locality, examines the most noteworthy short stories of to-day and yesterday, of old New England, and modern New England, of the middle West and the Far West, of the South, of the far North, and of New York city with its shifting and varied population,-analyzing in each case the best-known and most typical short stories of the several localities. This is an essay in a new field, and it will be read with keen interest by lovers of short stories who care at all to go below the surface of things.